The goals of this CURE were to:
- build interest and excitement in statistics through exposure to real-world applications of industrial engineering
- increase awareness of what industrial engineers do and how industrial engineering relates to other fields
- expose students to open-ended questions in engineering
- motivate students to consider industrial engineering/analytics as a field of study and career path
- motivate students to consider research and graduate school as a post-graduation plan
In this CURE, student groups explored access to social services in Atlanta, Georgia. During the CURE, students (1) gathered data on existing service locations (e.g., food banks) and potential expansion sites (e.g., places of worship), as well as demographic data on target groups (e.g., women of reproductive age), (2) applied facility location models to identify optimal expansion sites, (3) learned to visualize data and use statistics to compare travel distances to services for specific populations.
To evaluate the potential benefits of the CURE, we conducted pre-course and post-course surveys in multiple sections of ISYE 3770: four traditional (non-CURE) sections and one CURE section. All sections were delivered in Spring 2025. We then compared the pre- and post-surveys among these different sections. We are in the process of analyzing these survey results now. Written CIOS responses were mixed, but mostly positive (4 positive unsolicited comments about the CURE and 1 negative comment). From preliminary analysis, it seems that our CURE had a positive impact on research skills and generated interested in industrial engineering among some students who did not know much about the field beforehand.
Transformative teaching and learning means innovating in classroom instruction, just like we seek to innovate in research. I submitted my TTL project for the teaching innovation track of our annual conference, I included it as part of my packet for a teaching award, and I plan to write up the project for publication. The TTL Innovation Incubator program was extremely helpful in the development of this work!